To me, reading Erard’s essay for the first time was quite confusing to follow as he jumped from idea to idea at times, but rereading and annotating a second time was quite impactful in learning and noticing new information and ideas.One thing I noticed while re-reading, was a quote I had originally marked, but it was not to this second time reading did it truly stand out to me. It was the paragraph when he had wrote about a department in charge of programs. Originally that paragraph was a blur and was quite confusing when I read it, because I truly do not think it connected, and stuck with me. What really caught my attention going through it a second time was his quote of “the right metaphor must speak to inclusion and community”. This made me react and ultimately gave a new look on metaphors in the sense that a good metaphor truly has to include most, if not all members of a community for success. That changed my believes, after the first read I felt like certain metaphors were only for certain people, and the rest it did not mean anything, but after thinking of that my mindset towards metaphors were changed.
The part of the text I had glossed was when Erard mentioned the book titled “Metaphors We Live By” written by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Erard mentioned about this book that “pretty much every metaphor is inspired” by this book so I felt it may play a big role in his logics in his metaphors. I can say it helped glossing because when searching I found out the focus on this book was on cognitive learning and how metaphors affect it, and in relation to Erard’s essay there is almost a moment he says that with his mentions that metaphors should be used cognitively rather than emotionally. All in all, I feel like glossing the text is a great way to get more into the mind of the writer and their almost sort of get where some of the inspirations they write about may originate, or be closely related to.
